An Honest tear
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: Gilbert finds Anne in the sitting room and is quick to comfort her.


It was quite a mountain of used handkerchiefs, edged with lace, monogrammed, sodden and crumpled, a veritable Everest. Gilbert had never seen the like, nor had he seen Anne as she was, tearstained and still crying, nestled in the corner of the sitting room sofa, the picture of despair. What was it? Marilla, ill or dying? Some terrible accident in Avonlea or a revelation from Leslie that tender-hearted Anne could not bear? He barely had time to think before he was kneeling in front of her, taking up her hands in his.

"Oh, Anne-girl, what is it? What's happened?"

"Gil! I didn't hear you come in, I'm so sorry," she said, her voice a little muffled with the remnants of her weeping, her hitching breath.

"You must tell me, right away, my darling girl," he began and then was startled to hear her laugh aloud, to feel her hand ruffling his hair, stroking his cheek and then giving him an affectionate pat.

"Oh Gil! It's nothing, I was only rereading _Far from the Madding Crowd_ and it always makes me cry, poor Fanny Robin and Bathsheba, I always feel such a sneaking sympathy for her taking so long to realize what Gabriel meant to her," she explained, not quite brightly, but clearly not the distraught, sorrowing Anne Gilbert had mistaken her for.

"But, why? And there are all these handkerchiefs, you must have been sobbing as if your heart would break," he said, still confused though relieved, not only by her words and the tone of her voice, but the rosy color in her cheeks, the faint, errant dimple from the smile she'd only mastered since becoming Anne Blythe.

"I suppose you'll think me a silly little fool, but I do like to have a good cry, especially over such a wonderfully engaging book. A poem or a song won't do, it needs to be a good, long novel with lots of grief and catastrophe. I could never really let myself enjoy a little weep at Green Gables—can you imagine what Marilla would say? Or Mrs. Rachel Lynde? I think they'd have shipped me straight back to the orphanage no matter what Matthew would have said in my defense. Sometimes, I managed to sneak out a hankie and a book and have my cry behind the plum tree, but I couldn't quite be satisfied with only the one handkerchief. This," she said, gesturing to the pile of damp linen, "this is a luxury I hadn't anticipated even if it adds the the laundry tomorrow. But I've worried you and that's not at all what I wanted."

"If you're all right, I'll not be bothered. Though I should leave you, shouldn't I? To finish your book," he said, starting to rise when Anne reached out a hand to catch his. She squeezed it and he couldn't help reveling in the feeling of her slender fingers, her pearl ring pressed against his palm.

"Oh, I'm all done now. Won't you sit down and tell me all about your day? The stew for supper needs another hour in the pot and I'm wonderfully refreshed now. Did Mrs. Jenny have twins again or just one very large baby? That would make a change for her. And I don't see a terrible wrinkle in your brow, so I suppose you were right and the Cameron children all have chicken pox and not measles," Anne said, leaning in to lay her head against his shoulder as he settled in beside her, feeling much as Gabriel Oak must have, though he thought Anne would correct him, "my dear little-read Doctor Blythe! We are not nearly serious enough for Hardy, nor even all of Mr. Dickens. Perhaps Trollope though I fancy myself some descendant of Elizabeth Bennett, when the mood strikes me!"

Now Anne sat next to him, soft and pliant, relaxed from her weeping and the smell of a good meal was in the air, her sweet fragrance of lavender and rosewater and wife in little eddies between them. He would refrain from telling her the tip of her nose was carnation pink, preferring to forgo her little speech about how it must clash with her hair, and let himself tell her about his day, regaining the satisfaction he'd had when he'd been proven right about the Camerons, all four tow-headed boys scratching vigorously but not a worrisome case among them, save their mother who flapped about the house like a maddened chicken. He'd be sure to tell Anne that and wait for her own elaboration, perhaps a memory of the Hammonds or some little whimsy. He was not disappointed.

"But what kind of chicken? A Chantecler or a Red Shaver? Or something more exotic—a Black Java? I shall never see her without wattles now, Gil, you naughty man!"


End file.
